Grade Level: 6,7,8

Goals:

*The students will learn basic strategies of analyzing poetry

*The students will learn to write different types of poetry

Materials:

*Web sites

*Different books of poetry

*Print outs of a few poems to analyze with the class (See attached sheets-Ocean or Sand, The Silken Sand-The Ocean Blue, Poems by Marc Awodey)

Content Areas:

*Language Arts

*Music

Concepts:

*Writing poetry

*Analyzing poems

*Critical thinking

Procedure:

1. The teacher will begin by asking the students if they like or dislike poetry. The students should be honest and explain to the class why they responded as they did.

2. Next, the teacher will pose the question to the class about who enjoys music in the class. The students who responded "yes" will be asked what it is about music that they enjoy. They will also be asked if listening to and thinking about the lyrics of the songs is enjoyable.

3. The students will then be told that music is poetry and those students who really do not enjoy what they feel to be poetry might actually be enjoying a different form of poetry.

4. The students will then be asked what they define poetry as. Does it always have to rhyme? Is there a certain pattern that all poems must follow? Or, are there a variety of forms of poetry? The students will be asked to share with the class as many different styles of poetry that they have even seen.

5. The teacher will now begin introducing poetry--its basic forms and some terminology. The teacher will begin by explaining the difference between a couplet, a tercet, and a quatrain. He/she can use the examples shown on sheet 1 (included) to show the students different forms of poetry.

6. Then, the teacher could introduce sonnets and ask the students if they have ever heard of that term. The teacher can then describe such terms as meter, foot, iambic, pentameter, Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets, and give examples of each.

7. Then the teacher can introduce other types of poems--haiku, free verse, limericks, form poetry, etc. and give examples of each for the students to have. By now, the students will have a variety of poems to refer to when writing their own.

8. The teacher will then begin explaining to the students the basic strategies of analyzing poetry. It will be important for the teacher to emphasize that poetry is written to be debated and often there may be 30 different ways of looking at a poem. The teacher will explain such things as personification, euphony, cacophony, alliteration, assonance, tone, style, etc.

9. Now, the teacher will refer to the poems that have been handed out and ask the students to analyze them to the best of their ability and share what they have found should be shared with their classmates. Then, the teacher will ask them specific questions about each poem to have a more targeted discussion about each poem (see attached sheets).

10. Next, the teacher will encourage the students to begin writing their own poems. These poems will be kept in their poetry portfolio and will be added to as the teacher hands out more poems to the class and as the student writes more poetry. They will be encouraged to write whatever kind of poetry they feel the most comfortable with and make an effort to try a few different kinds. This will be expanded in part two of our lesson.

Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on their completed portfolio which will be done after an additional day of working on writing poetry and putting their poetry portfolio together.

Approximate Time: 3 hours

Resources:

~Barnes, R.G. (ed.). Episodes in five poetic traditions: the sonnet, the pastoral elegy, the ballad, the ode, masks and voices. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1972.

~Bankier, Joanna (ed.). The Other Voice: Twentieth Century Women's Poetry in Translation. New York: Norton, 1976.

~Brooks, Gwendolyn, et. al. Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing. Detroit: Broadside, 1975.

~Cole, William. Poems, One Line and Longer. New York: Grossman, 1973,

~Foster, John (ed.). Let's Celebrate: Festival Poems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

~Hollander, John (ed.). Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize. New York: Academy of American Poets, 1996.

~Howard, Richard. Preferences: 51 American Poets Choose Poems from their own work and from the Past. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

~McLaughlin, Richard. 1000 Years of European Poetry--Music of the Mind. New York: Universal Library, 1963.

~Mendoza, George. And I Must Hurry for the Sea is Coming In. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

~Pater, Alan F. (ed.). Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry. Beverly Hills, California: Monitor Book Company, 1980.

~Perry, John Oliver. The Experience of Poems, a text and anthology. New York: Macmillan, 1972.

~Reit, Ann. Alone Amid All this Noise: A Collection of Women's Poetry. New York: Four Winds Press, 1976.

~Riddles, Marilyn Reed. Poems from the Oregon Sea Coast. Brookings, Oregon: Sandpiper Press, 1982.

~Tennyson, Alfred. Edited by Ruth Greiner. Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Crowell, 1964.

~Washburn, Katharine and Major, John. (eds.). World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to our Time. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

Extensions:

-The teacher could also have the students listen to and hand out song lyrics of songs about oceans.

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